Destroyed my skin with Tret
So these are all from when I used tret a total of 4 times over the span of a month around 2 years ago. I wanted to share these at the time but felt so embarrassed lol. I want share them now cause I genuinely wanna know what caused this reaction and also to show that if tret hasn’t worked for you, you are not alone 😫.
So I went to the derm because I wanted to get treatment for my teenage acne, it was nothing cystic but at the time, I always had at least one pimple on my face and my red spots would take forever to fade. The dermatologist prescribed me the 0.025% cream and told me to apply twice per week.
I had done some research prior to this so I opted to start just once a week and work my way up. I tried to be careful, applied to dry skin, used a pea sized drop, didn’t use any other actives, moisturized morning and night, but I had the worst reaction I have ever had to any product and I don‘t even have sensitive skin! I think the photos don’t show the true texture because I had cystic acne for the first time in my life and it was the worst most painful thing ever. The mound on my left cheek that shows up around 1/9 was a bunch of interconnected cystic pimples creating a pocket of pus on my cheek . My mom told me to stop applying it but I thought ‘it’s just a purge, I need to push through’ but when it got so heinously bad, I stopped applying it which was probably around 1/22. While my acne from before just left red marks, because these were much deeper, I got acne scars that I still have to this day.
Anyways do any of y'all know what caused this? I was using otc adapalene prior to this around 1-2 per week and only experienced a bit of dryness, nothing like this. I am not allergic nor sensitive to any products and the rest of my skin didn’t react, just my cheeks so I don’t think it was the cream formulation or anything. Also any tips for fading acne scars 😅.
Also yes I went back to the derm around like June that year and she told me to work my way up to everyday use on adapalene and then switch back to the tret, which I just ignored cause I was too traumatized by retinoids at that point 😭.